Characterization of of urban traffic by using mobile phone traces

The current trend of urbanization involving changes within the activities in a city has created several problems. Addressing these problems requires reliable and detailed information regarding urban structure and related dynamics. This study uses mobile phone Call Detail Records (CDR) data collected from cellular towers in Györ, Hungary. First, our method began with the pre-processing of the telecom data. Then, experiments were carried out to understand the city dynamics through GIS visualization and statistical analysis. The visualizations provided a quantitative explanation of how the movement of cellular activity is useful in highlighting the flow of people in an urban infrastructure. This approach could complement and augment the efforts of traditional urban data collection methodologies, which are usually not readily available to urban planners and policy makers.